Disclaimer is the same as in the prologue.
Author's note at the end.
"Borrowed Time" - Chapter Six: Not To Be Alone
Dawn stood at the foot of her bed watching the motionless hanyou in the near darkness of her room. She had heard them talking, Buffy, Willow and the others who were there. They talked about his speed and the ferociousness of his attack. In words that she could clearly hear, they spoke of how he saved Buffy's life. In quieter, more fearful tones, they talked about the blood and how nothing they knew could survive a wound like his.
She had to see for herself and what she saw now caught her breath in her throat and made her heart beat loudly in her chest. How could his heart survive now that it seemed to be open to the elements? How could his lungs pull in the air they needed in a chest so marred? How could anything in him work again after a battle like that?
Without conscious thought, Dawn's hand reached out for him. Her fingers touched the delicate parchment of the spell scroll tucked in his robe. "I want to talk to you but . . . I can't tell if you're listening," she said, seemingly to the room. She felt embarrassed and curious and frighteningly secretive all at once. Some things she just had to know. She could not pull her hand away from the scroll even if she wanted to. "If I remove the binding spell, will you promise that you'll stay put?"
With surprising ease she lifted the spell from his robe. She watched him closely for a sustained moment but he did not seem to move. He breathed but so quietly that she could not hear it. Only a small rise in his chest revealed his life. He had to be deep in sleep. God knew he needed it. He probably hadn't heard a word she said. Embarrassed, she realized she had just spoken to herself.
Dawn turned away from him to a small desk and laid the spell scroll down. Around her mirror she had attached photos, the smiling faces of those she loved, snapshots of happiness frozen in time. She looked at them with bittersweet longing. They had stood at the edge of doom time and again and somehow with wits and miracles they lived through it.
'Almost' . . . she thought as her eyes lingered on a photo of Tara.
Would this time be different?
"Where's the monk?"
Inuyasha's voice broke so unexpectedly into her reverie that Dawn practically jumped. She turned around suddenly and found herself face to face with him. "What are you doing up?!" she screeched in a high pitched whine that he had heard from other females whom he had caught off guard. "You're not supposed to get up! Sit!!"
Inuyasha flinched at her comment, bracing himself for an automatic reaction that never came.
Dawn noticed his reaction. She didn't understand how her shrillness would cause him to recoil. "What?" she asked.
"Nothing," he huffed. Shaking his head, he tried to dismiss his own weakness. That word, said by the right girl would have flattened him to the ground. Most of the time it made him angry enough to scream. This time it didn't happen and its absence only reminded him of his distance form home. "Where's Tetsuo?" he asked, casting himself from one discomfort to another.
"I think he's with Giles," she answered. "Why?"
Inuyasha settled himself back down on her bed. He laid back and stared up at the ceiling. He missed the stars of the open sky. "Feh, it doesn't matter."
The frantic beating of Dawn's heart began to steady itself from the shock of Inuyasha's unexpected awakening. Seeing him back on the bed eased her worry over his injuries. He shouldn't have been able to move at all, she thought as she watched him scowl at her ceiling. His mind was a mystery to her. He risked so much for people he only barely tolerated. Why? Her mind stumbled clumsily for some reason. She had to ask him but she didn't know how. "Willow says you saved Buffy," she blurted exposing her awkward abilities at talking to him.
"Save your gratitude," he snapped. He liked admiration for great deeds and heroic action. Tonight he didn't deserve it and he didn't want to remind himself of his failure. "She got distracted and I . . . . I was trying something."
"Did it work?" Dawn asked.
He raised his head to show her the full venom of his annoyance. "Does it look like it did?!"
"No," she replied. Her voice had become very small. She looked down at the floor and twisted her fingers up together to keep her hands still. She felt stupid.
After a great pause of silence, Inuyasha allowed his voice to break the void. "I'll just have to do something different next time," he said. Dawn had picked him to be a hero for reasons he had trouble understanding or even finding. He had to figure out some way to accept that mantle and prove himself worthy of it, even if it was only to his own eyes. He looked to the nervous girl standing at the edge of the bed. Her eyes darted between the door to where she stood as she tried to resolve herself to stay or go. Her words of parting waited to be spoken. He had to give her something, some reassurance, just a little hope.
"Dawn," he said, catching her eyes and holding them with his own, "I haven't been defeated yet."
***
Tetsuo crouched on the damp ground of the Summer's backyard. The air had chilled with the setting of the sun and a gentle breeze brushed through his black hair. The monk felt none of this. He only felt the inevitable, a hunger within him that would consume the world, all the good, all the bad, everything; a hunger that he possessed but was not his own. Soon it would be over. He just had to let go.
He heard the tentative footsteps of his old friend behind him. Anyone who knew him well knew what was happening. At the moment that was only three people. One of them he told. One of them he only barely met. And the last was the truest friend he had ever known. "I'm sorry, Rupert," he said in a voice heavy with regret.
Giles stepped to his side. Not able to look Tetsuo in the eye he stared off at the darkened skyline. "I'm sorry too," he echoed.
"I had really hoped to be here for . . ." Tetsuo's voice trailed off. He could not find the proper word.
"The end is near for all of us," Giles answered. His usual wry quality had returned only this time he was tainted with the sound of defeat. "Only nearer so for you."
Tetsuo frowned at the Watcher. What dark times he must have seen to have brought him to this mood. His death should not cause them to give up. He was merely a casualty. "You should not despair," he told his friend. "There is hope for you yet." A trace of a smile played across his face as his mind turned to the adventures he would miss. "The sword will work. It only needs the proper stimulus."
Giles sighed heavily and laid his hand upon the monk's shoulder. "I wish I had your faith," he said.
Tetsuo smiled. For a moment he forgot his own misery and found the strength to bring cheer to his morose friend. "It is not faith, Rupert," he said with confidence. "It is only what I know." He pulled himself to his feet and reaching into his robes he pulled out an old book, worn and tattered with age. He had every intention of giving it to him. He did not want it destroyed in his demise. It was important and he hoped it would help them in this crucial time. "This is Miroku's journal," he explained, handing the book to Giles. "It chronicles every step of his journal with Lord Inuyasha until his death."
The monk fell silent as the Watcher turned the book over in his hands, touching the delicate cover lightly with his fingertips.
Tetsuo turned his face to the same bleak horizon that Giles had hidden his gaze moments before. "I must confess," he began. The words did not come as easily as he would have hoped. "My bringing him to you was not entirely selfless."
Giles' eyebrows arched towards his hairline. "How so?" he asked.
The monk looked to the makeshift well safely distanced away from him as if he stared into the past. He watched events unfold in his mind's eye and reported them with the detachment of a historian. "Inuyasha is torn between life and death, a choice he can never fully face while battling Naraku. But there will come a time when they will believe their journey is at an end. They will be lulled into a false sense of security." He paused as if pulling the full weight of his words out into the air took a painful use of strength. "He has a debt to pay and out of honor he will choose death."
"What?" Giles sputtered in disbelief. "Why?"
"Miroku believed he felt it was all he had left to give," Tetsuo said sadly. He shook his head, trying to remind himself that the one he spoke of still lived. He turned to the Watcher and took his arm in a strong grip. His tone still serious now became immediate. "But they will be deceived, for Naraku will rise again and their champion will be lost."
Giles sensed the direction the monk was leading him. "And if he does not choose death?" he asked. "What would happen?"
"It is possible, Rupert," he answered with no small measure of relief, "that he could destroy Naraku eventually--"
"-weakening the power of the First."
"Yes."
"and saving your line."
Tetsuo closed his eyes. "I am the last." He released Giles' arm and passed his hand over his face. His strength had begun to run out.
Giles clapped his hand on the monk's shoulder hoping in some small way to support him. There was so little that could be done and the time had grown too late. "I am so sorry, my friend."
"I am too," he replied. He held the weariness back like a man trying to catch a cloud with his arms. He reached up and clasped Giles' fingers with a thankful squeeze. "But I was glad to have this chance to save things. From that springs my hope."
Tetsuo shuddered with the kind of tremble that did not come from the cold. He pulled away from his friend's grip as he tried to steady himself. His eyes stared blindly ahead and his breathing became raspy. Desperately he tried to bring focus to his thoughts. He had so much left to say. "No one knew his mind," he said, dragging his mind back to the past and the events recorded in Miroku's journal. "His death surprised them all." He looked to Giles now with a plea in his eyes. "Through the well the past can change. Save him and you save us all."
He reached into his robes again and pulled out a small slip of paper. With a trembling hand he gave it to Giles. "Take this. It is what you need to awaken the Tetsusaiga."
Giles took the paper. "Is it a spell?"
Tetsuo shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut to hold back his considerable strain. "It is a phone-number," he explained, choking the words out. "All the arrangements have been made. They await your call."
Giles' brow furrowed in confusion. "I don't understand."
The monk opened his eyes again and he looked to the Watcher with more meaning than his words could convey. With great effort he spoke, "It is the life he does not choose."
Giles nodded faintly to reassure his friend that he understood. Although he didn't, he hoped he would not fail him.
Tetsuo gripped his beaded hand, clenching it tightly into a fist. The world began to dim around him. He could feel the pull and he had nothing left in him to stop it. "Forgive me, Rupert," he panted. "I cannot deny the abyss any longer."
Giles stepped away slowly. His instincts told him to stay. His friend needed him. He was dying. The knowledgeable, rational side of him knew that he could die as well if he stayed. His leaving felt like betrayal but his feet pulled him away. He had to carry on. "Farewell, Tetsuo."
Worse than stepping away was turning his back but that action brought him face to face with Willow. His startled reaction caused him to stumble over his words. "W-Willow, please," he said with an urgency that bordered on panic, "You must leave."
With a weak smile she took Giles by the hand and pulled him closer to her until he stood at her side. "Don't worry, Giles," she said with reassurance in a voice that had turned raw with emotion. "We're safe. I've erected a barrier." Her eyes turned to Tetsuo's desperate state. He could no longer move. His eyes fixed on them as the sound of the vacuum rose around him. "No one deserves to die alone."
***
Buffy came into her kitchen to find Kennedy staring intently outside to the backyard. She walked up behind her and asked out of curiosity, "What's happening out there?"
The younger woman looked startled by the sudden question but she would not move her hands form the door. She seemed to be protecting it. "Willow said everyone needs to stay in the house," she said.
Buffy didn't like her tone or the implied order from her friend. "Why?" she snapped, hoping the answer was a good one.
Kennedy turned her head to face the Slayer. She couldn't find a more sensitive way to say it and lying about it was simply wrong. "Tetsuo is going to die," she told her.
"What?!" Buffy shouted. Her hands instantly reached for the door. She had to get outside. She had to fix this. Her mind reeled on the desperate thought that no one else was going to die in her home. Through the window, she could see Giles and Willow standing together and the monk crouched on the ground several feet away form them. Something was happening to him but she could not see.
Kennedy caught her and blocked her from the door. Somehow she managed to hold her back and forced her to listen. "You can't stop it! No one can!"
***
Upstairs Dawn looked out of her bedroom window to the yard below. "What's Tetsuo doing in the backyard?" she asked frowning.
Inuyasha snapped his head around to face her. His hackles raised in fear. He knew the answer to her question. "Dawn, get away from the window!" he barked at her.
Unfazed by his demand, she continued to watch the scene below. "But something's going on out there," she argued.
The hanyou leapt from the bed to reach out and pull the stubborn teenager away. "Dawn! Don't look outside!!"
But he was too late.
TBC
Chapter Seven: "Mourning for the Dead"- Buffy talks with Dawn about the complications of loving a demon and Inuyasha wanders down to the basement and finds that has more in common with Spike than either of them realize. Should be a short chapter.
Author's note at the end.
"Borrowed Time" - Chapter Six: Not To Be Alone
Dawn stood at the foot of her bed watching the motionless hanyou in the near darkness of her room. She had heard them talking, Buffy, Willow and the others who were there. They talked about his speed and the ferociousness of his attack. In words that she could clearly hear, they spoke of how he saved Buffy's life. In quieter, more fearful tones, they talked about the blood and how nothing they knew could survive a wound like his.
She had to see for herself and what she saw now caught her breath in her throat and made her heart beat loudly in her chest. How could his heart survive now that it seemed to be open to the elements? How could his lungs pull in the air they needed in a chest so marred? How could anything in him work again after a battle like that?
Without conscious thought, Dawn's hand reached out for him. Her fingers touched the delicate parchment of the spell scroll tucked in his robe. "I want to talk to you but . . . I can't tell if you're listening," she said, seemingly to the room. She felt embarrassed and curious and frighteningly secretive all at once. Some things she just had to know. She could not pull her hand away from the scroll even if she wanted to. "If I remove the binding spell, will you promise that you'll stay put?"
With surprising ease she lifted the spell from his robe. She watched him closely for a sustained moment but he did not seem to move. He breathed but so quietly that she could not hear it. Only a small rise in his chest revealed his life. He had to be deep in sleep. God knew he needed it. He probably hadn't heard a word she said. Embarrassed, she realized she had just spoken to herself.
Dawn turned away from him to a small desk and laid the spell scroll down. Around her mirror she had attached photos, the smiling faces of those she loved, snapshots of happiness frozen in time. She looked at them with bittersweet longing. They had stood at the edge of doom time and again and somehow with wits and miracles they lived through it.
'Almost' . . . she thought as her eyes lingered on a photo of Tara.
Would this time be different?
"Where's the monk?"
Inuyasha's voice broke so unexpectedly into her reverie that Dawn practically jumped. She turned around suddenly and found herself face to face with him. "What are you doing up?!" she screeched in a high pitched whine that he had heard from other females whom he had caught off guard. "You're not supposed to get up! Sit!!"
Inuyasha flinched at her comment, bracing himself for an automatic reaction that never came.
Dawn noticed his reaction. She didn't understand how her shrillness would cause him to recoil. "What?" she asked.
"Nothing," he huffed. Shaking his head, he tried to dismiss his own weakness. That word, said by the right girl would have flattened him to the ground. Most of the time it made him angry enough to scream. This time it didn't happen and its absence only reminded him of his distance form home. "Where's Tetsuo?" he asked, casting himself from one discomfort to another.
"I think he's with Giles," she answered. "Why?"
Inuyasha settled himself back down on her bed. He laid back and stared up at the ceiling. He missed the stars of the open sky. "Feh, it doesn't matter."
The frantic beating of Dawn's heart began to steady itself from the shock of Inuyasha's unexpected awakening. Seeing him back on the bed eased her worry over his injuries. He shouldn't have been able to move at all, she thought as she watched him scowl at her ceiling. His mind was a mystery to her. He risked so much for people he only barely tolerated. Why? Her mind stumbled clumsily for some reason. She had to ask him but she didn't know how. "Willow says you saved Buffy," she blurted exposing her awkward abilities at talking to him.
"Save your gratitude," he snapped. He liked admiration for great deeds and heroic action. Tonight he didn't deserve it and he didn't want to remind himself of his failure. "She got distracted and I . . . . I was trying something."
"Did it work?" Dawn asked.
He raised his head to show her the full venom of his annoyance. "Does it look like it did?!"
"No," she replied. Her voice had become very small. She looked down at the floor and twisted her fingers up together to keep her hands still. She felt stupid.
After a great pause of silence, Inuyasha allowed his voice to break the void. "I'll just have to do something different next time," he said. Dawn had picked him to be a hero for reasons he had trouble understanding or even finding. He had to figure out some way to accept that mantle and prove himself worthy of it, even if it was only to his own eyes. He looked to the nervous girl standing at the edge of the bed. Her eyes darted between the door to where she stood as she tried to resolve herself to stay or go. Her words of parting waited to be spoken. He had to give her something, some reassurance, just a little hope.
"Dawn," he said, catching her eyes and holding them with his own, "I haven't been defeated yet."
***
Tetsuo crouched on the damp ground of the Summer's backyard. The air had chilled with the setting of the sun and a gentle breeze brushed through his black hair. The monk felt none of this. He only felt the inevitable, a hunger within him that would consume the world, all the good, all the bad, everything; a hunger that he possessed but was not his own. Soon it would be over. He just had to let go.
He heard the tentative footsteps of his old friend behind him. Anyone who knew him well knew what was happening. At the moment that was only three people. One of them he told. One of them he only barely met. And the last was the truest friend he had ever known. "I'm sorry, Rupert," he said in a voice heavy with regret.
Giles stepped to his side. Not able to look Tetsuo in the eye he stared off at the darkened skyline. "I'm sorry too," he echoed.
"I had really hoped to be here for . . ." Tetsuo's voice trailed off. He could not find the proper word.
"The end is near for all of us," Giles answered. His usual wry quality had returned only this time he was tainted with the sound of defeat. "Only nearer so for you."
Tetsuo frowned at the Watcher. What dark times he must have seen to have brought him to this mood. His death should not cause them to give up. He was merely a casualty. "You should not despair," he told his friend. "There is hope for you yet." A trace of a smile played across his face as his mind turned to the adventures he would miss. "The sword will work. It only needs the proper stimulus."
Giles sighed heavily and laid his hand upon the monk's shoulder. "I wish I had your faith," he said.
Tetsuo smiled. For a moment he forgot his own misery and found the strength to bring cheer to his morose friend. "It is not faith, Rupert," he said with confidence. "It is only what I know." He pulled himself to his feet and reaching into his robes he pulled out an old book, worn and tattered with age. He had every intention of giving it to him. He did not want it destroyed in his demise. It was important and he hoped it would help them in this crucial time. "This is Miroku's journal," he explained, handing the book to Giles. "It chronicles every step of his journal with Lord Inuyasha until his death."
The monk fell silent as the Watcher turned the book over in his hands, touching the delicate cover lightly with his fingertips.
Tetsuo turned his face to the same bleak horizon that Giles had hidden his gaze moments before. "I must confess," he began. The words did not come as easily as he would have hoped. "My bringing him to you was not entirely selfless."
Giles' eyebrows arched towards his hairline. "How so?" he asked.
The monk looked to the makeshift well safely distanced away from him as if he stared into the past. He watched events unfold in his mind's eye and reported them with the detachment of a historian. "Inuyasha is torn between life and death, a choice he can never fully face while battling Naraku. But there will come a time when they will believe their journey is at an end. They will be lulled into a false sense of security." He paused as if pulling the full weight of his words out into the air took a painful use of strength. "He has a debt to pay and out of honor he will choose death."
"What?" Giles sputtered in disbelief. "Why?"
"Miroku believed he felt it was all he had left to give," Tetsuo said sadly. He shook his head, trying to remind himself that the one he spoke of still lived. He turned to the Watcher and took his arm in a strong grip. His tone still serious now became immediate. "But they will be deceived, for Naraku will rise again and their champion will be lost."
Giles sensed the direction the monk was leading him. "And if he does not choose death?" he asked. "What would happen?"
"It is possible, Rupert," he answered with no small measure of relief, "that he could destroy Naraku eventually--"
"-weakening the power of the First."
"Yes."
"and saving your line."
Tetsuo closed his eyes. "I am the last." He released Giles' arm and passed his hand over his face. His strength had begun to run out.
Giles clapped his hand on the monk's shoulder hoping in some small way to support him. There was so little that could be done and the time had grown too late. "I am so sorry, my friend."
"I am too," he replied. He held the weariness back like a man trying to catch a cloud with his arms. He reached up and clasped Giles' fingers with a thankful squeeze. "But I was glad to have this chance to save things. From that springs my hope."
Tetsuo shuddered with the kind of tremble that did not come from the cold. He pulled away from his friend's grip as he tried to steady himself. His eyes stared blindly ahead and his breathing became raspy. Desperately he tried to bring focus to his thoughts. He had so much left to say. "No one knew his mind," he said, dragging his mind back to the past and the events recorded in Miroku's journal. "His death surprised them all." He looked to Giles now with a plea in his eyes. "Through the well the past can change. Save him and you save us all."
He reached into his robes again and pulled out a small slip of paper. With a trembling hand he gave it to Giles. "Take this. It is what you need to awaken the Tetsusaiga."
Giles took the paper. "Is it a spell?"
Tetsuo shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut to hold back his considerable strain. "It is a phone-number," he explained, choking the words out. "All the arrangements have been made. They await your call."
Giles' brow furrowed in confusion. "I don't understand."
The monk opened his eyes again and he looked to the Watcher with more meaning than his words could convey. With great effort he spoke, "It is the life he does not choose."
Giles nodded faintly to reassure his friend that he understood. Although he didn't, he hoped he would not fail him.
Tetsuo gripped his beaded hand, clenching it tightly into a fist. The world began to dim around him. He could feel the pull and he had nothing left in him to stop it. "Forgive me, Rupert," he panted. "I cannot deny the abyss any longer."
Giles stepped away slowly. His instincts told him to stay. His friend needed him. He was dying. The knowledgeable, rational side of him knew that he could die as well if he stayed. His leaving felt like betrayal but his feet pulled him away. He had to carry on. "Farewell, Tetsuo."
Worse than stepping away was turning his back but that action brought him face to face with Willow. His startled reaction caused him to stumble over his words. "W-Willow, please," he said with an urgency that bordered on panic, "You must leave."
With a weak smile she took Giles by the hand and pulled him closer to her until he stood at her side. "Don't worry, Giles," she said with reassurance in a voice that had turned raw with emotion. "We're safe. I've erected a barrier." Her eyes turned to Tetsuo's desperate state. He could no longer move. His eyes fixed on them as the sound of the vacuum rose around him. "No one deserves to die alone."
***
Buffy came into her kitchen to find Kennedy staring intently outside to the backyard. She walked up behind her and asked out of curiosity, "What's happening out there?"
The younger woman looked startled by the sudden question but she would not move her hands form the door. She seemed to be protecting it. "Willow said everyone needs to stay in the house," she said.
Buffy didn't like her tone or the implied order from her friend. "Why?" she snapped, hoping the answer was a good one.
Kennedy turned her head to face the Slayer. She couldn't find a more sensitive way to say it and lying about it was simply wrong. "Tetsuo is going to die," she told her.
"What?!" Buffy shouted. Her hands instantly reached for the door. She had to get outside. She had to fix this. Her mind reeled on the desperate thought that no one else was going to die in her home. Through the window, she could see Giles and Willow standing together and the monk crouched on the ground several feet away form them. Something was happening to him but she could not see.
Kennedy caught her and blocked her from the door. Somehow she managed to hold her back and forced her to listen. "You can't stop it! No one can!"
***
Upstairs Dawn looked out of her bedroom window to the yard below. "What's Tetsuo doing in the backyard?" she asked frowning.
Inuyasha snapped his head around to face her. His hackles raised in fear. He knew the answer to her question. "Dawn, get away from the window!" he barked at her.
Unfazed by his demand, she continued to watch the scene below. "But something's going on out there," she argued.
The hanyou leapt from the bed to reach out and pull the stubborn teenager away. "Dawn! Don't look outside!!"
But he was too late.
TBC
Chapter Seven: "Mourning for the Dead"- Buffy talks with Dawn about the complications of loving a demon and Inuyasha wanders down to the basement and finds that has more in common with Spike than either of them realize. Should be a short chapter.